Thrive or Die!

The book is being written!

The Regenerative Managing Book

Joe and I are writing the book on regenerative managing. Our work on this goes back for over a decade.

Fortunately our collaboration all this time has been mutually beneficial. Among other things, I co-authored Infinite Possibility with Joe. This resulted in us doing several joint workshops in Europe and the U.S.

We have tentatively titled our regenerative managing book Thrive or Die! This seems to us to capture the overarching imperative for enterprises. But who knows what title will ultimately come out the other end of the book publishing process.

Sections and Chapters

Description

DESIGN MANAGING

1. Managing’s Challenge

2. Framing Managing

We address managing as a design problem. We note that enterprises manage to be the root cause of many of their difficulties. From a design perspective, you could say manage to fail.

We take on this challenge by designing a whole new way of managing, a greenfield design, not one rebuilt on a rotten foundation. We start by establishing our philosophy of managing and end with a framework that, for the first time, comprehensively defines managing.

BE REGENERATIVE

3. Unleash Potential

4. Infuse Meaning

5. Embrace the Individual

6. Liberate Creativity

7. Orchestrate Vitality

8. Effect Creative Destruction

9. Achieve Coherence

We fill in the managing framework to produce a fully comprehensive, wholly objective, all encompassing, and exceptionally definitive guide for building self-regenerating enterprises.

For managing to be considered effective, our philosophy calls for it to build enterprises that thrive indefinitely. With this mindset, we identify the first principles of managing that produces regenerative enterprises. These first principles then undergird the seven imperatives of regenerative managing.

These imperatives tell the story of regenerative managing. The regenerative enterprise:

Unleashes potential of its contributors.

Infuses meaning to guide its contributors in pursuit of meaningful purpose.

Embraces the individual to meet their wants, needs, and desires.

Liberates creativity to generate copious opportunities for new value creation.

Orchestrates vitality to persist in creating new value in its operation and customer offerings.

Effects creative destruction within itself and its ecosystem in establishing its businesses.

Achieves coherence to harmonize its practices to thrive in the present and the future.

BECOME REGENERATIVE

10. Build Your Practices

11. Practice Regeneration

12. Manage to Thrive

Putting the regenerative managing framework to work, you can create your own thriving enterprise. You do this by tailoring your managing practices to fit your unique circumstance in accord with regenerative first principles and to carry out its seven imperatives.

In the end, if you don’t choose to thrive forever you are choosing to fail eventually.

Status of the Book

as of September 25, 2017

“When will the book be published?”—if only I knew.All I know for sure: I am dedicated to getting it published as soon as possible.

Joe and I are in the process of developing a proposal for publishers. In the meantime, I keep writing and Joe edits when he gets a chance.

The two DESIGN MANAGING chapters are fully drafted with several iterations of editing done.

The content has been gathered and drafts completed for all seven of the BE REGENERATIVE chapters.

The three BECOME REGENERATIVE chapters are all outlined and some content developed. But most importantly, the process forming the virtuous cycle of enterprise regeneration has been developed. You can see this in the regenerative managing overview section of this site.

But the big news since last spring's update: First, frameworks have been finalized! You can at least portions of them on the Regenerative Managing section of the site. Second, a full set of ideograms representing the intent, imperatives, and first principles of regenerative managing has been completed!

These milestones go a long way toward clarifying the regenerative managing story and accelerating the completion of the book.